The “tendency of the rate of profit to fall” is one of the most contentious elements in Karl Marx’s intellectual legacy.1 He regarded it as one of his most important contributions to the analysis of the capitalist system, calling it,… Continue Reading
Prior to the presidential election of April/May 2007 France seemed to epitomise both the crisis facing mainstream politics in Europe and the potential of the developing movement against neoliberalism, which had scored a number of important victories. However, the election,… Continue Reading
The international movement against capitalist globalisation has been globally visible for nearly a decade now. It started with the Chiapas rising of January 1994 and the French public sector strikes of November_December 1995, and exploded onto the global stage at… Continue Reading
José Carlos Mariátegui was born into a society in crisis, a Peru deeply divided between a coastal sector where most of Peru’s capitalist class was concentrated, an emerging mining industry in the central valley between Lima and Huancavelica, and a… Continue Reading
As Tony Blair departed and Gordon Brown prepared to take over as prime minister one great myth was boomed out by New Labour’s propaganda machine—that Brown had achieved a “miracle” for the British economy. He achieved no less than the… Continue Reading
“The distribution of income in Britain has now become so unequal that it is beginning to resemble a Third World country”, wrote Gordon Brown in his 1989 indictment of Thatcherism, Where There Is Greed. He complained that since 1979 “an… Continue Reading
Robin Blackburn, author of The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776‑1848, spoke to International Socialism on the bicentenary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade What was your reaction to the official commemoration of the banning of the slave trade,… Continue Reading
On 14 March this year, the state government of West Bengal, headed by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), sent several thousand police troops into the rural district of Nandigram in East Midnapur, the scene of a three-month movement by… Continue Reading
The right wing government in Greece is likely to call an early general election this autumn following a year of resistance by workers and students. A wave of student struggle began in May 2006 and continued through to April 2007,… Continue Reading
“Sarkozy, Brown, Merkel. Neoliberalism has its people in power in the main European countries and is free to proceed full speed ahead as it wishes.” That, in effect, is what the optimistic capitalist commentators are saying, and this view finds… Continue Reading